Reading comprehension for dummies: curriculum

JUST recently, reading Janna Malamud Smith’s memoir of her father, novelist Bernard Malamud, I was struck by the way this Brooklyn-born child of poor immigrants who were scarcely able to speak English nonetheless managed -- along with many others like him -- to receive a first-class education in New York City’s public schools. While we, for decades now, have been asking ourselves why Johnny can’t read, back in the 1920s and 1930s, young Bernie not only learned to read but, by the time he graduated from high school, could also be described as “well-read.”

“One of the big ways in which we Americans distinguished ourselves from Europe when we created a nation was by adopting the egalitarian idea that great discrepancies in one’s life chances should not be the result of who one’s parents happen to be,” declares E.D. Hirsch Jr. in “The Knowledge Deficit,” the latest of several books in which he has addressed the problems besetting American education. “If we fail in our traditional aim of providing equal opportunity to all children at the beginning of life, we fail in our duty to preserve what is best in our inheritance, and we squander the profoundest source of our influence in the wider world.”

Most famous for his 1988 work, “Cultural Literacy,” Hirsch distinguished himself as a scholar of Romantic literature before applying his indefatigably inquiring mind to the question of why so many American youngsters seem to be falling behind in reading, a word with two meanings, Hirsch notes. “The first means the process of turning printed marks into sounds and these sounds into words. But the second sense means the very different process of understanding those words. Learning how to read in the first sense -- decoding through phonics -- does not guarantee learning how to read in the second sense -- comprehending the meaning of what is read.”

Thanks to the battle waged by researchers and reformers to return to teaching reading through phonics rather than the dubious “see and say” method, American schools are now doing a much better job of giving children that vital skill of “decoding.” As a result, up until the fourth grade, the reading abilities of American children now compare favorably with those of children the world over. But after that it’s a different story. As American students grow older, their reading comprehension levels drop far below those of their peers in other countries. This, even though schools have been spending more and more time teaching reading comprehension skills. So what’s wrong?

As Hirsch explains, the problem is not bad teachers -- or uninvolved parents, or even a culture that disparages learning -- but rather, mistaken theories about how we learn to comprehend what we’ve read. Many schools teach strategies such as “look for the main idea” when time would be better spent giving students a solid foundation of background knowledge they need to understand what they have read. This crisply written book does a superb job of explicating this need for “core knowledge” in a way that is not only convincing but also entertaining.

The solution he and others are advocating is, he realizes, fraught with political minefields: a national core curriculum, an idea first proposed by Thomas Jefferson and now, in a time of increased mobility, even more relevant. This book is not one of those diatribes against tenured radicals, although conservatives should welcome Hirsch’s idea of a curriculum designed to impart a solid body of knowledge about history, science, the arts and our country’s values and traditions.

Genuinely egalitarian liberals should also embrace a plan that will give all children what they need to compete and excel. As Hirsch warns, however, conservatives and liberals alike will have to overcome their attachment to local control over education. While conservatives fear dictates to impose books such as “Heather Has Two Mommies,” liberals worry about Christian theology and anti-Darwinism. But the core knowledge Hirsch proposes (which would take up only 40% to 60% of the curriculum, leaving teachers, parents and local schools free to add what they see fit), would give all American children what Jefferson saw was needed: “an identical early education at state expense.”

One factor left out of Hirsch’s otherwise cogent argument, and even much of the national debate, is a point that might go a long way toward defusing the whole issue: Young people do not always think or do as they’ve been instructed. Teenagers have certainly been known to rebel against religious dogma, college students to become fed up with codes of political correctness and of what they perceive to be their professors’ knee-jerk anti-Americanism. Although leftists may grouse about a curriculum that strikes them as too traditional while right-wingers grumble for the opposite reason, much more than the content of school curriculum goes into shaping a person’s opinions and character. Youngsters who have acquired a sufficient amount of background knowledge and who have become good readers will themselves seek out material that will open their minds to viewpoints, ideas and voices slighted or ignored by the curriculum, be it Andrea Dworkin’s or Ayn Rand’s, Karl Marx’s or Cardinal Newman’s.

Meanwhile, parents, teachers and politicians would do well to read Hirsch’s eminently sensible book, which offers specific, well-thought-out advice based on sound research. This is a truly constructive work, not about blaming people but about calling us all to rise above politics to do what is best for our country’s children.

Merle Rubin is a critic whose reviews have appeared in the Washington Times, Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor.